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Celebrating Black History

In late summer 1915 – 39 years before Brown vs. Board of Education declared segregation unconstitutional, 40 years before Rosa Parks boarded her bus, and 48 years before Martin Luther King, Jr. stood at the Lincoln Memorial and gave his famous speech – a Harvard-trained historian named Carter G. Woodson and four others founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH). Inspired by the crowds of eager attendees at Chicago’s 50th anniversary celebration of emancipation, the group hoped to establish a cohesive movement promoting the scientific study of black life and history.

Over the next decade, ASNLH and its publication, The Journal of Negro History, championed the cause of black intellectuals and entrepreneurs across America, and eventually pushed for the creation of Negro Achievement Week in February 1926. In 1976, President Gerald Ford expanded the week to include all of February, and Black History Month as we know it was born.

We just finished celebrating Black History Month 2012, but below are links to a few helpful resources for those wanting to take a deeper look into African American cultural identity, past and present.

Black Cool: One Thousand Streams of Blackness edited by Rebecca Walker.
This collection looks at the roots of Black Cool and attempts to name elements of the phenomena that have emerged to shape the global expectation of cool itself.

The End of White World Supremacy: Four Speeches by Malcom X.
These speeches document Malcolm's progression from Black nationalism to internationalism, and are key to both understanding his extraordinary life and illuminating his angry yet uplifting cause.

Sugar of the Crop: My Journey to Find the Children of Slaves by Sana Butler.
Sugar of the Crop is the story of an unprecedented quest to find the last surviving children of slaves. In a revealing search from Los Angeles nursing homes to Alabama churches, Sana Butler provides a fascinating picture of African-American life and its legacy in the post-Civil War world.

Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice by Raymond Arsenault.
Arsenault recounts how Freedom Riders, emboldened by federal rulings that declared segregated transit unconstitutional, traveled together from Washington DC through the Deep South, putting their their lives on the line for racial justice.

DVDs

Thurgood
A celebration of the life and legacy of Thurgood Marshall, the first African American appointed to the nation's highest judicial bench.